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August 26, 2026, 3:15 PM
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| Reuters: |
Meta agrees to pay up to $18B to settle US states' claims that it designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children, misled consumers, and more — Meta Platforms (META.O) will pay up to $18 billion and strictly limit how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram under a sweeping agreement …
More: New York Times, Reuters, CNBC, Barron's Online, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, The Record, Business Insider, Financial Times, New York Times, BBC, American Prospect, Breitbart, Bloomberg, Politico, News and Sentinel, Dow Jones Newswires, Entrepreneur, Android Authority, Jerusalem Post, New Jersey Office …, Blaze Media, NBC News, SFist, Engadget, Times of India, Davis Enterprise, TheDesk.net, Capital Brief, Business Standard, Android Central, Polygon.com, PetaPixel, Mediaite, Gulf News, Office of the Attorney General, The Guardian, UPI, CBS News, Channel NewsAsia, The Economic Times, Forbes, International Business Times, TMZ.com, WPXI-TV, Office of the Vermont …, Sky News, CBC News, JusttheNews.com, WKYT-TV, Toronto Sun, The Irish Times, The American Conservative, India Today, LADbible, Texas Attorney General, Overturned, The Proton Blog, CalMatters, BBC, United States district court, Straight Arrow, and Telegraph
X: @jonhaidt, @rmac18, @hshaban, @agjamesuthmeier, @m_ccuri, @gergelyorosz, @rihardjarc, @jason_kint, @rmac18, @adamkovac, @amyklobuchar, @charlottealter, @jimcramer, @sarahhuckabee, @madisonmills22, @andymstone, @jimcramer, @borrowed_ideas, @mgsiegler, @charlottealter, @jerrycap, @mikeisaac, @willguyatt, @adrianweckler, @quinnypig, @garymarcus, @_zeets, @jonathanturley, @douglaslfarrar, @ddayen, @stocksavvyshay, and @munster_gene
LinkedIn: Kate O'Loughlin and John Battelle
Forums: Hacker News, r/news, r/news, r/UXDesign, r/neoliberal, r/LosAngeles, r/UpliftingNews, r/California, r/worldnews, r/privacy, r/technology, and r/StockMarket
| Meta Newsroom: |
Meta's deal with 52 AGs includes daily time limits for teens and algorithmic feed controls; ~$5.3B of it rests on YouTube and TikTok implementing the measures — Our Agreement With US State Attorneys General — Today, we are announcing an agreement with a bipartisan group …
More: Wired, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Meta Newsroom, BleepingComputer, State of California, PCMag, TechCrunch, CNN, The Keystone Newsroom, The i Paper, ABC News, Inc.com, Deseret News, ESG Dive, iPhone in Canada, Yahoo Finance, Parenting News, The Gander, The Daily Wire, Santa Fe New Mexican, Mirror, Aftermath, Investor's Business Daily, New York Magazine, New York Daily News, Wall Street Journal, Neowin, Pittsburgh, PA Patch, Dexerto, CyberInsider, and Office of the Attorney General
X: @mikeisaac, @agrobbonta, @danprimack, @newjerseyoag, @mikeisaac, @benjamingoggin, @bwaltens, @kenpaxtontx, @metanewsroom, @scattygenoffice, @agalanwilson, @agchanaway, @nicholasabrown_, @edludlow, @cecianasta, @zerohedge, @rmac18, @ezcontra, @oablanchard, @newyorkstateag, @oknox, @mikeisaac, @hshaban, @agjamesuthmeier, @stocksavvyshay, and @michaelscherer. LinkedIn: Nicole Mezzasalma
| Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal: |
Meta's AG settlement will be distributed to the 48 signing states and four jurisdictions in annual installments over a 10-year period based on their populations — The deal contains broad new safeguards for underage users but only pays out in full if TikTok and YouTube make similar concessions
More: NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Information, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CTech, The Standard, Gizmodo, Fortune, Across Michigan, MI Patch, Bloomberg Law, Silicon Republic, KSWO-TV, Morningstar, AppleInsider, JURIST, CBS News, KOTA-TV, Associated Press, WALA-TV, VTDigger, Dow Jones Newswires, MediaPost, Denver Post, Washington Examiner, The Hill, CNBC, Hindustan Times, Implicator.ai, The San Francisco Standard, Daily Mail, New Republic, Deadline, Variety, The Irish News, KKTV-TV, Newser, The Daily Caller, Inc.com, Deseret News, and Office of Attorney General …
X: @dcattorneygen, @carlquintanilla, @will_doran, @dcattorneygen, @newyorkstateag, @dcattorneygen, @dcattorneygen, @dcattorneygen, and @maustermuhle
LinkedIn: Bill George and Jonathan Burns
Bluesky: @cultexpert.freedomofmind.com and @maryannefranks
| Lauren Feiner / The Verge: |
Meta says its AG deal requires it to create an age assurance standard that is subject to independent testing, with a false positive rate no higher than 10% — It agreed to independent testing of age assurance standards. … Meta settled its latest kids online safety trial with a group …
More: CNN, Bloomberg, CBS News, and The Star
X: @frankluntz and @p_remarks
Forums: r/UpliftingNews and r/technology
| Z.ai: |
Z.ai releases GLM-5.3-Flash, the first natively multimodal GLM-5 series model, with 320B parameters, and says it served the model as Ox Alpha on Chinese chips — We introduce GLM-5.3-Flash, the first natively multimodal model in the GLM-5 series. With 320B total parameters and just 18B active parameters …
More: The New Stack, Hugging Face, Wccftech, and TestingCatalog AI News
X: @jayair, @openrouter, @jeremiahdillon, @eliebakouch, @thezachmueller, @teortaxestex, @andrewcurran_, @skirano, @nathancgy4, @semianalysis_, @zixuanli_, @semianalysis_, @andrewcurran_, @kimmonismus, @zai_org, @zixuanli_, @nathancgy4, @hesamation, @jun_song, @miaai_lab, @rohanpaul_ai, @arena, @zai_org, @kimmonismus, @zephyr_z9, @zixuanli_, @semianalysis_, @kimmonismus, @miaai_lab, @openrouter, @hesamation, @arena, @scaling01, @zai_org, @altryne, @vllm_project, @bookwormengr, @chris_j_paxton, @zai_org, @zephyr_z9, @scaling01, @opencode, @aibattle_, and @sentdex
Forums: r/ZaiGLM, r/singularity, r/GeminiAI, and r/LocalLLaMA
| Luz Ding / Bloomberg: |
Z.ai confirms speculation that Ox Alpha is a new iteration of its GLM series and releases the weights for it; Ox Alpha topped OpenRouter's leaderboard — The new artificial intelligence model that's swept to the top of online usage charts with high performance at zero cost was created by China's Z.AI Co., also known as Zhipu.
More: TechCrunch, CTGT, and Business Insider
X: @tensorqt, @connebs, @hesamation, @bindureddy, @a_k_nain, @davidondrej1, @hesamation, @tphuang, @zephyr_z9, @tugot17, @meer_aiit, @thezachmueller, @mikepfrank, @opencode, @xenoimpulse, @vectal_labs, @mervenoyann, @ruima, and @filicroval. Bluesky: @th.alassa.pink
Forums: Hacker News, r/LocalLLaMA, and r/singularity
| Zac Hall / 9to5Mac: |
Apple announces a “Surprise and shine” event on September 9 at 10am PT at Apple Park, where its first foldable iPhone, iPhone 18 Pro, and more are expected — Apple has officially announced its next product event, where it will unveil the iPhone 18 Pro lineup and its first foldable iPhone.
More: TechCrunch, Reuters, Macworld, Moneycontrol, AppleInsider, CNN, Mirror, The Sun, Engadget, The Verge, MacRumors, Gizmodo, CNBC, The Mac Observer, Bloomberg Law, Quartz, SammyGuru, Mashable, TechRadar, BGR, Axios, Stuff, iClarified, Lifehacker, The Apple Post, 91mobiles, The Shortcut, and MacStories
| Luz Ding / Bloomberg: |
Alibaba releases Qwen3.8-Flash, an open-weight, 125B-parameter model built on its next-gen Qwen 4 architecture, saying it rivals Opus 4.6 and V4-Flash — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. released the latest model under its popular Qwen series, a lower-priced platform aimed at driving adoption of its marquee AI offering globally.
More: Qwen, Reuters, PYMNTS, Blockonomi, The Decoder, and Seeking Alpha
X: @alibaba_qwen, @theahmadosman, @unslothai, @arena, @arena, @italoacasas, @alibaba_qwen, @modelscope2022, @alibaba_qwen, @alibaba_qwen, @maziyarpanahi, @miaai_lab, and @kimmonismus. Forums: Hacker News
| Annie Palmer / CNBC: |
AWS says it plans to shut down Mechanical Turk on September 30, “following an assessment”; the service, launched in 2005, outsourced tasks to 500K+ humans — Amazon is soon pulling the plug on its 21-year-old crowdsourced work platform, called Mechanical Turk, the company said Tuesday.
More: Wall Street Journal, PYMNTS, Amazon Web Services, Business Insider, and Quartz
X: @techdreamzai, @calbucci, @kirbywinfield, @ben_wray1989, @ainsworthkeith, @quinnypig, @lmatsakis, and @emollick. LinkedIn: Andres Vera
| Todd Bishop / GeekWire: |
Amazon agrees to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam company behind open-source database DuckDB, for an undisclosed sum; DuckDB will remain open source — Amazon has agreed to acquire DuckLabs, the company behind DuckDB, the fast-growing open-source database that has become a favorite …
More: Services for DuckDB, About Amazon, The Register, CRN, Amazon Web Services, Techstrong IT, and Blockonomi
X: @dan_note, @mattsgarman, @quinnypig, @barrald, and @duckdb
LinkedIn: Swami Sivasubramanian, Tony Zeljković, Gábor Szárnyas, Darryl Ruggles, and Hannes Mühleisen
Forums: r/aws, r/dataengineering, r/programming, and Slashdot
| Katie Paul / Reuters: |
Investigation: Meta explored slashing many teams by ~60% to become “AI native”, but pulled back after staff revolted and data showed AI agents were ineffective — To make its workforce “AI native,” Meta explored slashing the size of many teams across the company by as much as 60% in two waves, internal documents show.
More: Engadget, International Business Times, and TechRadar
X: @ross__hendricks, @gergelyorosz, @gergelyorosz, @herrmanndigital, @alediaferia, @buccocapital, @edzitron, @chshersh, and @gergelyorosz
Bluesky: @lauridonahue and @karlbode.com
Forums: r/BetterOffline, r/business, r/ArtificialInteligence, r/technology, r/artificial, r/Longreads, and r/DevelEire
| John Walker / Kotaku: |
Rockstar says GTA VI gameplay leaking “this way has been heartbreaking”, calling it “unfortunate” that the “game experience may now be impacted” by spoilers — The company also uncharacteristically apologizes for the lack of official information
More: Dazed, Forbes, Comic Book, PC Gamer, GamesRadar, TheGamer, Protos, Game Informer, ScreenRant, PlayStation LifeStyle, Mashable, iPhone in Canada, Thurrott, Digit, KitGuru, 9to5Toys, ScreenRant, Dexerto, The Shortcut, The Verge, and TheGamer
X: @rockstargames, @__silent_, @tropicalmaku, @m3ssimp, @crotfs, @gameroll_, @gtabase, @nuhre_, @videotech, @arc_5o9, and @gtasixinfo. Bluesky: @fry69.dev
| Tom Warren / The Verge: |
Xbox announces a disc-to-digital feature that will allow users to digitize their existing physical games, rolling out for Xbox Insider testers on August 31 — Xbox Insiders will get access to this new feature on August 31st. … Microsoft is officially announcing a new Xbox feature …
More: XBOX Wire, BBC, Windows Central, GamesIndustry.biz, Gizmodo, VideoCardz.com, Thurrott, Tom's Hardware, XDA Developers, WinCentral, Game Informer, TechEBlog, Tech4Gamers, Phandroid, GamesRadar, MobileSyrup, Neowin, Dexerto, IGN, Comic Book, TheGamer, and Digital Trends
X: @asha_shar, @snapblastplay, @mightykeef, @xbox, @grummz, @dustincanfly, @vicious696, @stallion83, @jthefrog0, @seereax, @colteastwood, @realradec, @bringbackbanjok, @ai_emeraldapple, @ingamemenu, @synthpotato, @zhugeex, @ethangach, and @colteastwood. LinkedIn: John Snavely. Bluesky: @spiindoctor
Forums: r/technology, r/LastStandMedia, r/kindafunny, r/TwoBestFriendsPlay, and r/Games
| Bill Gates / GatesNotes: |
Bill Gates says “the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history” and “we are not preparing adequately”, calling for a regulatory framework — Bill Gates, artificial intelligence, AI, generative AI for everyone, responsible ai news, ai and robotics …
More: MIT Technology Review, Financial Times, International Business Times, Tech Brew, The Information, Forbes, Gizmodo, Washington Examiner, Politico, Tom's Guide, Inc.com, The Daily Caller, TechCrunch, Axios, CNBC, GeekWire, Metro.co.uk, New York Post, CNN, The American Bazaar, Quartz, and Business Insider
X: @mustafasuleyman, @martinvars, @deitaone, @matthuber78, @davidwright_7, @gordongchang, @jordanschachtel, @edzitron, @conor64, @andrew_lilico, @peterwildeford, and @louiscyprien. LinkedIn: Lynn Cook
Bluesky: @stephenkb and @frankpasquale
Forums: Hacker News and r/ArtificialInteligence
| Karen Weise / New York Times: |
More: Washington Post, Bloomberg, Bloomberg, Futurism, Axios, Mashable, Scripting News, and The Verge
X: @semaforben and @peterwildeford
Forums: r/antiai, r/technology, r/politics, and r/NoShitSherlock
| Alex Heath / Time: |
Interviews with OpenAI leaders, employees, and others on the company's reboot; Sam Altman says OpenAI would have a system he would call AGI by the end of 2026 — Alex Heath … They hoisted signs to “stop the AI race” and scrawled chalk messages on the sidewalk.
More: The Verge, The Decoder, and iPhone in Canada
X: @_nathancalvin, @edzitron, @deredleritt3r, @alexeheath, @zephyr_z9, @andrewcurran_, @garymarcus, @altryne, @haider1, @evansryan202, and @time. Forums: r/accelerate
| Reuters: |
The US DOJ says it disrupted a Chinese hacking operation responsible for break-ins at the DOJ, NASA, the Fed, Senate, and others, seizing two platforms' domains — The United States said Wednesday that it had disrupted a Chinese hacking operation responsible for break-ins at the U.S. Justice Department …
More: US Department of Justice, Tom's Hardware, Wall Street Journal, PCMag, Quartz, TechCrunch, CNBC, The Hill, TMZ.com, RedState, Nextgov/FCW, ITPro, and Daily Sabah
Forums: r/politics, r/technology, and r/worldnews
| Brody Ford / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Anthropic has agreed to pay Nscale $45B over six years to rent about 460MW of power at a West Virginia data center using Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips — Anthropic PBC has agreed to spend $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from Nscale's flagship data center development in West Virginia …
More: CNBC, Reuters, and TheEnergyMag
| Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: |
Amazon's Ring unveils a new proprietary encryption architecture called TAKE, set to begin rolling out in September as the default encryption for all cameras — The new “Throw Away The Key Encryption” method will become the default on all Ring cameras — Ring has a new way to protect your videos.
More: About Amazon, The New Things, How-To Geek, CNET, TechCrunch, and iPhone in Canada. Bluesky: @hypervisible.blacksky.app
| Reuters: |
Sources: Moonshot AI is in early talks over revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to host Kimi K3, and is seeking up to a 30% share — China's Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft (MSFT.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) … | Counterpoint Research: |
In Q2, Apple's base iPhone 17 was the global best-selling smartphone, with a 6% share, followed by the iPhone 17 Pro Max; Apple and Samsung had all 10 top spots — - The iPhone 17 led the Top 10 bestsellers list with 6% overall market sales share for the quarter, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro take the next two spots.
More: 9to5Google, MacRumors, Android Central, AppleInsider, iThinkDifferent, and Android Authority. Forums: MacRumors Forums
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Google debuts Gemini 3.5 Transcribe, a speech-to-text model that powers Gboard Rambler and is coming to Chrome, in public preview for developers and enterprises — This model is “designed to capture your natural speaking style to better understand your intent and recognize custom vocabulary.”
More: Google, The Verge, Engadget, Blockchain.News, RuntimeWire, TechRadar, Droid Life, and Android Authority
X: @sundarpichai, @googledeepmind, @thorwebdev, @kat_kampf, @vamsibatchuk, @harrisonfjobe, @alisa_fortin, @googlecloudtech, @gregisenberg, @visionagents_ai, @evanotero, @ammaar, @officiallogank, @patloeber, @jastephx, @googleai, @googledevs, @googleaidevs, @_philschmid, @genevieve__h, @thorwebdev, @googleaistudio, @antigravity, and @google. Forums: r/Bard
| Wall Street Journal: |
A profile of Leopold Aschenbrenner, who worked for SBF and OpenAI before launching Situational Awareness; Aschenbrenner married Dario Amodei's chief of staff — A 24-year-old investor was hailed as a visionary and attracted billions—before turning into Wall Street's latest cautionary tale
More: New York Post, Don't Worry About the Vase, and Inc.com
| Jonathan Weil / Wall Street Journal: |
Microsoft faces investor criticism over opaque financial reporting across capex, its OpenAI deal, and Azure, which is buried in the Intelligent Cloud segment — From capex to its flagship cloud platform, Microsoft stands out for lack of transparency — Cloud computing, meet cloudy numbers.| Financial Times: |
The US AI data center buildout is posing complex challenges to major lenders as they stretch themselves to finance, insure, and underwrite a novel asset class — Wall Street players extending themselves to underwrite this colossal new asset class are looking to limit exposure.
Forums: r/neoliberal
| Courtenay Brown / Axios: |
The Trump administration has struck data-sharing deals with OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, and other tech companies to track how AI is affecting jobs and hiring — The Trump administration has struck data-sharing deals with major technology firms to help track how AI is affecting jobs and hiring … | Andy Masley: |
Public polling suggests the US' severe anti-data center backlash is primarily driven by local environmental and economic concerns, not anti-Big Tech sentiment — It's probably not your ideological thing, or mine. It's about object-level claims about how data centers impact the communities …
X: @ericlevitz, @techczech, @shashj, @richlowry, and @andymasley
| Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: |
Bengaluru-based Runable, whose AI agents let small businesses find customers, run ad campaigns, and more, raised a $21M Series A at a $65M post-money valuation — As artificial intelligence makes it easier than ever to build websites and apps, Indian startup Runable is betting …
More: Ventureburn, Moneycontrol, Business Standard, FinSMEs, and Runable
| Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg: |
Sources and documents: Huawei proposes exporting its high-end Ascend 950-series chips to build Egyptian government AI data centers, testing US tech diplomacy — Huawei Pitches Egypt With AI Chips, Data Center Buildout — Video Player is loading. — Unmute — Current Time 0:00 Loaded: 100.00% Playback Rate
X: @business and @richard_casey
| Wall Street Journal: |
Banks are warming up to launching their own stablecoins as nonbank companies enter the market; sources: JPMorgan Chase evaluated launching its own stablecoin — Executives are on defensive as companies outside of banking system launch coins — Banks large and small have started to warm …
More: PYMNTS, Decrypt, The Crypto Times, and CryptoSlate
| Steven Rosenbush / Wall Street Journal: |
Deep Cogito, which develops open-weight models and helps companies build their own specialized AI models, raised a $43M Series A led by TQ Ventures — The startup founded by former Google AI search employees raised $43 million to help companies build their own specialized AI models
More: Quartz and RuntimeWire
| Bloomberg: |
Shanghai-based MiniMax reports H1 2026 revenue up 283% YoY to ~$116.6M, above 2025's 159% YoY growth, as its M3 model lags behind rivals like Z.ai's GLM-5.2 — MiniMax Group Inc.'s revenue surged 283% in the first half of 2026, even as the Chinese AI upstart trailed rivals such as Z.AI Co. in releasing top-tier large language models.
More: The Information
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